“The Mystery School” – OSHO

COULD YOU PLEASE EXPLAIN EXACTLY WHAT THE WORK OF THE MYSTERY SCHOOL IS?

Books can be written, can be dictated to a machine, but what I am going to start is totally different. It is an UPANISHAD. Long forgotten, one of the most beautiful words in any language, a very living word, `upanishad‘ means sitting at the feet of the master. It says nothing more: just to be in the presence of the master, just to allow him to take you in, in his own light, in his own blissfulness, in his own world.

And that’s exactly the work of a mystery school.

The master has got it. The disciple also has got it, but the master knows and the disciple is fast asleep. The whole work of a mystery school is in how to bring consciousness to the disciple, how to wake him up, how to allow him to be himself, because the whole world is trying to make him somebody else.

The function of a mystery school is that the master — speaking or in silence, looking at you or making a gesture, or just sitting with closed eyes — manages to create a certain field of energy. And if you are receptive, if you are available, if you are ready to go on the journey of the unknown, something clicks and you are no more the old person.

You have seen something which before you had only heard about — and hearing about it does not create conviction but creates doubt. Because it is so mysterious… it is not logical, it is not rational, it is not intellectual.

But once you have seen it, once you have been showered by the energy of the master, a new being is born. Your old life is finished. A mystery school teaches how to live. Its whole science is the art of living. Naturally it includes many things, because life is multi-dimensional. But you must understand the first step: being totally receptive, open.

In the past, in the days of THE UPANISHADS, those mystery schools that existed in India were called gurukula. A significant word — it means `the family of the master’. It is not an ordinary school, a college or a university. It is not a question of just learning; it is a question of being in love. You are not supposed to be in love with your university teacher.

But in a gurukula where THE UPANISHADS flowered, it was a family of love. The question of learning was secondary, the question of being was important. How much you know is not the point; how much you are is the point. And the master is not interested in feeding your bio-computer, the mind. He is not going to increase your memory because that is of no use. That can be done by a machine, and the machine can do it better than you.

An upanishad is a mystery school. A mystery school is a very systematic encounter with the miraculous. And the miraculous is all around you, within and without both. Just a system is needed. The master simply provides a system to enter slowly into deeper waters, and ultimately to enter a stage where you disappear into the ocean; you become the ocean itself.